The present invention relates to the field of business cards.
Business cards are frequently used in business contacts to communicate particulars about the company and especially personal particulars about the card holder. These particulars are also stored digitally in personal computers or PDAs (Personal Digital Assistant) in programs of the type Microsoft Outlook.
The business cards are also designed to arouse a specific feeling in the recipient, e.g. to provoke a feeling of reliability, rapidness, efficiency etc. of the company represented by the holder of the business card. Such qualities are often conveyed with the aid of trademarks and various graphical means, such as paper quality (coated paper etc.), logotypes, colors, font, layout etc.
For people with a wide circle of business contacts, the collection of business cards will quickly be large. A great number of aids for organizing and managing collection of business cards are presently available.
In many cases the recipient of the business card wants the particulars of the business card to be transferred to his own computer. This means that the particulars must be converted from analog to digital format.
Thus scanners are available which are particularly dedicated to reading business cards and subjecting the particulars to OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and transferring them to a standard format for automatic inputting into a computer program. The problem that arises is that the optical character recognition is often unreliable or completely useless owing to the fact that certain particulars, such as telephone number and e-mail address, on the business card are printed using a very small font. Furthermore, the use of logotypes and figurative marks may cause problems to the OCR program.
Another possibility is using communication between portable computers or PDAs which often have an IR communication port. If an owner of a PDA directs his PDA to a recipient""s PDA and presses a button, the business card particulars are transferred in digital format, a xe2x80x9cdigital business cardxe2x80x9d, from the transmitting PDA to the receiving PDA. This technique is today used by, for example, Palm Pilot.
The technology has not become generally accepted owing to, inter alia, compatibility problems, i.e. both the business card holder and the recipient must have the same type of PDA, or at least PDAs that are compatible. Nor will a visible piece of evidence be obtained that the particulars have been transferred except that shown on the display, since such digital business cards are fully standardized, they cannot communicate a special feeling to the recipient, which is one of the important functions of business cards. Therefore, ordinary business cards are often used parallel with the above-mentioned xe2x80x9cdigitalxe2x80x9d business cards.
There is thus a need for a technique which combines the communication of the traditional business card with the digital transfer of particulars, but without the drawbacks caused by optical character recognition.
The present invention aims at solving this problem by providing a business card which is designed as a traditional business card, but where the business card particulars can be transferred to the recipient in digital format in a smooth fashion, without optical character recognition.
When handing over a business card, the recipient often writes a few notes or makes sketches on the back of the card. For the recipient and the card holder to have the same information, it would be of interest if these notes were copied to the card holder. However in most cases there is no copying machine around, which usually means that the information is not duplicated, and the card holder tries to remember the information and write it down later, which sometimes does not take place.
There is thus a need for an automatic copying function which sends the information written on the back of the business card to the card holder, while the card recipient keeps the business card with the same information.
The business card recipient keeps the business card with the information written on the back to be used on a later occasion. However, it sometimes happens that business cards disappear, along with the information.
In a further development of the invention, it would be of interest that the same information was sent to the business card holder as well as the business card recipient, whereby the disappearance of the physical business card will be of no import.
The information taken down can have the character of a fixed meeting, indicating time and place. The back of the business card can have a form to be filled in with this information in particular boxes. This can also be used by, for example, dentists to indicate the next appointment. A further example is that the business card can have check boxes for preselected alternatives, such as sending a product brochure or a standard-type non-disclosure agreement (NDA).
It may be of interest to forward the information which has been taken down as an e-mail, and then the e-mail address must be stated to which the information is to be forwarded. If the information is to be sent to the card holder, the particulars on the card can be used, but if the information is to be sent to an optional recipient, or to a fax with a special telephone number, this must be indicated on the business card and interpreted, usually subjected to optical character recognition or intelligent character recognition. The business card may then be provided with special fields, which facilitate intelligent character recognition, a so-called comb containing boxes or partitions within which one and only one character, such as a digit or a letter, is allowed. Such xe2x80x9ccombsxe2x80x9d can be positioned along the side edges of the card on its back.
In the case where information is transmitted by means of a mobile phone or a PDA, the keypad of the mobile phone can be used to indicate fax number or e-mail address. Alternatively, the address book particulars of the mobile phone can be used, if they have been inputted, or are inputted in situ. A further alternative is the corresponding activity while using the inputting device of a PDA etc.
According to the present invention, information is transmitted using a position-coding pattern, which is printed on part of the front and/or back of the business card or the entire front and/or back of thereof. A reading pen provided with a reader for the pattern is used to read the information according to the pattern. One example of a pattern and a reading pen which enable the above-mentioned functions is described in Swedish Patent Applications Nos 9901954-9 and 9903541-2, which have been assigned to the Applicant.